The Wilderness

The Claremont Institute - The Wilderness Years Begin

The whole article is well worth a read, but this paragraph is a nice summary of why what is commonly (and mistakenly) called "liberalism" in America is as damaging as all forms of wishful thinking and irresponsibility.

The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new "rights," goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint. The people who have this moral and social capital understand and accept that there "will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out," according to David Brooks. Instead, liberalism promotes snarling but unrugged individualism, combining an absolute right "to the lifestyle of one's choice (regardless of the social cost) with an equally fundamental right to be supported at state expense," as the Manhattan Institute's Fred Siegel once described it. Finally, the capital bestowed by vigilance against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is squandered when liberals insist on approaching street gangs, illegal immigrants, and terrorist regimes in the hopeful belief that, to quote the political scientist Joseph Cropsey, "trust edifies and absolute trust edifies absolutely."

The Threat of Another View

Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Hate - NYTimes.com

Nazi Germany, the USSR, European Socialism and the American left have the common thread of only one way to be successful. Eliminate the opposition. The only totalitarian program that has ever "worked" is the elimination of your opposition -- by muzzling them, getting them to move away, or if all else fails, shooting them.

Folks on the left ALWAYS know better -- about what kind of car you should drive, food you should eat, healthcare you should like, books you should read -- the list goes on and on ad nauseum. The fact that very nearly 100% of the time not only are their pronouncements and actions designed to remove your freedom to choose most anything, they they are also just as often very wrong -- meaning that what they demand you do doesn't work (if it did, free people would be doing it!). Their economies are less prosperous, their healthcare causes them to flee to the US if they actually get sick, and their cars are either exhorbantly priced, or reasonably priced but nothing you would want in your garage.

The key to left wing success is to destroy the opposition and to remove any sort of civil dialogue -- people that disagree with you are "haters", "religious nuts", "racists", "naive fools" ... and on and on and on. The bottom line -- people that disagree with their views are dangerous and need to be censored. Here is Paul Krugman on the horror of Fox news not bowing at scraping to BO 100% of the time. NOTE -- remember how the MSM treated Bush. Of course, the difference is that in Krugman's eyes, that was FAIR treatement of Bush, and anything less than complete boot licking for BO is "racist".

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the
analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even
worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an
African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small
terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And
that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in
our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second
worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American
lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at
their, and our, peril.

BO Relativism

RealClearPolitics - Hovering on High: Obama Surveys the World

The essence of fascism is the equivalence of all on a moral and very earthly plane, so that the brilliant leader of day -- Hitler 70 years ago in Germany, BO here today can make their Olympian pronouncements as the nearest thing in a godless world to holy writ.

Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding. He shall guide you.

The sheep are prepared, be it a foreign policy of bowing scraping profuse apology, buying the car companies to force Americans to buy the cars that BO and the climate Nazis approve of, or providing us with a health care system as as soulless as the post office, the fascists are on the march.

Well, yes. On the one hand, there certainly is some American university where the women's softball team has received insufficient Title IX funds -- while, on the other hand, Saudi women showing ankle are beaten in the street, Afghan school girls have acid thrown in their faces, and Iranian women are publicly stoned to death for adultery. (Gays, as well -- but then again we have Prop 8.) We all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge? 

That's the problem with Obama's transcultural evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.

The sheep become so used to the dialectic of "on one hand this and the other ...", while the supposed comparisons are more like "in one universe thus, and in some other, not related universe ...". It seems that with media support, the level of critical thought for many is nil.

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

Actually, distorting history is far worse than that. Along with the constant false equivalence rhetoric it prepares the weak minded for the removal of the "other side" as "too dangerous". Some 88 year old crackpot shoots someone in the holocaust museum, a lone gunman shoots a late term abortionist ... Rush Limbaugh says something controversial -- how long can we "put up with this dangerous hate"?? The preparation for the complete destruction of any opposition to BO is now being sown in earnest.

The Paygo Joke

The 'Paygo' Coverup - WSJ.com

All politicians lie, the problem is that Democrats usually get away with it:

The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won't tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.

Paygo isn't even really a "gimmick" -- it is just a flat out ruse to say one thing and do another. The other cool thing about being a Democrat is that you can "stack your lies".

The President also revived the myth that paygo was somehow responsible for eliminating budget deficits during the Clinton years. In fact, that brief era of balanced budgets was due to: mid-decade spending reductions by a GOP Congress elected on a balanced-budget pledge; an excessive cut in defense spending to 3% from 5% of GDP across the decade; and an unsustainable revenue boom due to the dot-com bubble. But harking back to the 1990s lets Mr. Obama avoid having to defend his own spending record.

Note also that none of those things had anything to do with Clinton, other than he signed the budgets. CONGRESS shall appropriate -- then and now, and guess what has been happening to deficits (not to mention the economy) since Pelosi and the Democrats took over in 2006:

That's what Democrats also promised in 2006, with Nancy Pelosi vowing that "the first thing" House Democrats would do if they took Congress was reimpose paygo rules that "Republicans had let lapse." By 2008, Speaker Pelosi had let those rules lapse no fewer than 12 times, to make way for $400 billion in deficit spending. Mr. Obama repeated the paygo pledge during his 2008 campaign, and instead we have witnessed the greatest peacetime spending binge in U.S. history. As a share of GDP, spending will hit an astonishing 28.5% in fiscal 2009, with the deficit hitting 13% and projected to stay at 4% to 5% for years to come.

Again, the WSJ is being optimistic -- they are assuming that the economy is going to recover and GROW in order to have the huge deficits account for "merely" 4-5% for years to come. That remains to be seen.

The Dark Future is Today

RealClearPolitics - Growth's Rapidly Diminishing Prospects

The nation now is 17 months into the demographic deluge that began in January 2008 when the leading edge of the wave of 78 million baby boomers began exercising the preposterous entitlement to collect Social Security at age 62, as most Social Security recipients do. In 1935, when Social Security was enacted, no one envisioned it supporting most retirees for a third of their adult lives. So, should Americans shop until the boomers drop?

We have been talking about "what will we do in the future when the Boomers retire" -- the future is now. We are having a nice recession.

Recently, Standard and Poor's noted that Britain's ballooning need to borrow might cost the country its AAA credit rating, which would raise its cost of borrowing. Britain's deficit this year is expected to be at least 12.4 percent of GDP. America's is scheduled to be more than 13 percent. Years of such government borrowing might crowd private sector borrowers out of credit markets and raise long-term interest rates.

So after years of the press talking of the US being "A banana republic" for borrowing mere 100's of billions, now that we are actually borrowing like a banana republic with TRILLIONS being borrowed and 13% of our GDP, they are applauding it!

The president's astonishing risk-taking satisfies the yearning of a presidency-fixated nation for a great man to solve its problems. But as Coolidge said, "It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man." What the country needs today in order to shrink its problems is not presidential greatness. Rather, it needs individuals to do what they know they ought to do, and government to stop doing what it should know causes or prolongs problems.

If only BO could figure out that he is not a great man before he completes the great bankruptcy!

The Good In Fox News

HOW FOX NEWS OPENED AMERICA - New York Post

Charles is always good, this is critical:

A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn't even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by
the rise of Fox News.

What left me slack-jawed was the fact that she, like the cohort of mainstream journalists she represented so perfectly, was so ideologically blinkered that she could not fathom the plain fact that the liberal media were presenting the news and the world through a particular lens. The idea that it was particular, and that there might
be competing ones, perhaps even superior ones, was beyond her ken.

Get that? What is the use of "freedom" if everyone thinks there is only one "true" view of the world. That is what Fox News gave us -- it, along with National Review and Rush Limbaugh gave a lot of Americans the courage to no longer bleat in unison with the view of the MSM.

Letterman Civility

So Palin's 14 year old daughter having sex in the stands with a Yankee player is "funny"? In his top ten list he also talks about Sarah Palin's "slutty flight attendant look". BO has a daughter that will turn 14 while he is in office -- is it OK to have a joke about her having sex then? After all, black teens have a much higher incidence of teen pregnancy than whites, so it is "statistical". How about Michelle as a "Crack Ho"? Humorous with no MSM outcry? If not, why not? Are we a reverse rascist nation, an anti-Republican nation, or both.

Conservatism is Dead

RealClearPolitics - The Collapsing Global Left

The MSM is largely ignoring the drubbing that the parties of the left continue to take around the world. Why? Because socialist centralized governments can't "deliver the goods" -- the countries that have handed the keys to those governments have health care systems that are not only costly, they are in complete shambles. Declining standards of living and no outlook for improvement. In short, they already have what now seem to be intent to garner for our own nation.

Why is this? The last paragraph of the article gives the main point:

American voters are bombarded by their media with the message that
conservatism is dead, because a Democrat got 52 perecent of the
presidential vote. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Left proceeds apace
elsewhere in the world.

At some point, the US sheep will turn away from the media and look at the reality of the real world. Until that time, we will continue to decline.

Saved or Created

McGurn: The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims - WSJ.com

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

I find that the national sheep are so attuned to the MSM these days that they believe what they hear more than what they see. As late as Sept of 2008, the market was at 12K and unemployment was 6%, yet the MSM was screaming "depression" and the man in the street was as mad as hell at the "horrible" economy. They ignored what they were living and went with what the news told them.

Now unemployment is at 9.4%, when it was promised that if we followed the BO plan would not exceed 8%, but "things are better" -- the market is under $9K.

I'm waiting for some bogus statistic on debt and deficits. Maybe "Net Invested Surplus" or something ... assume some nice solid rate of return on deficit spending ... like the old saws about 2-4x return on deficit spending. Just flat out count it was "income" as if all that investment came in as tax revenues, and all of a sudden, massive real deficits become charming "NIS Surpluses" ... in the trillions of dollars. BO ends up with a "booming" economy when running for election with 10's of millions of "Save Or Created" jobs and trillions of "NIS Surplus".

Maybe we could have the "happy days index" -- sort of the inverse of the old Carter "misery index". Forget any real numbers, this is the age of BO -- make them up and get happy!

Because Most Voters Are Healthy

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent - WSJ.com

I answered the good doctors question at the end with my title.

Here is the problem with the Canadian system:

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If
surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

When the writer was young and living in Canada, he was in favor of the system -- because he was healthy!! How good is your fire insurance? Would it be better if it was "free" government fire insurance?? Basically, you have no idea how good something is unless you use it. "Free fire insurance" would be a great example of a government program -- the VAST majority of people would never use it, so would be happy. The few that did may be happy or unhappy, but it would make no difference -- since the government provided it for "free", their would be no alternative, so it would be like a lot of other things that we just say "that's the way it is"

I personally know multiple people that I work with that have emigrated from Canada or England to get health care. They liked government health care when they were healthy and voted for it. Why not? It was fine until they ended up on the short end of health care rationing. Are there folks that get sick and are happy with it? Sure, some are at the front of the line -- even though the vast majority of lottery players lose, the fact that some win keeps a lot of gamblers in the game. Government health care can be thought of as a "line lottery" -- if you never get sick, you never have to worry, so it is GREAT! If you do get sick and are lucky enough to end up with a shorter wait -- again, GREAT! You win!

Like a lot of socialist policies though, the trouble with this is that EVERYONE except the very filthy rich is forced to play, but those that take jobs that pay more end up paying MUCH more to play, yet unlike gambling, they don't get any more chances to win. The "game" penalizes those that it needs the most to keep operating, so less and less people are incented to work at higher stress and higher difficulty jobs that pay more -- all that pay allows them to do is to finance the health care gambling game that they could play without any job at all!!!

The incentives are reversed -- minimal or no work is advantaged over difficult and long hours of work.

Follow Europe?

European election results: Battered and bruised | The Economist

I think our MSM usually indicates that Europeans are a lot smarter than Americans and we ought to emulate them. So ought we be moving hard right and protesting leftism? Somehow I suspect that this topic won't get a lot of coverage in our unbiased US press.

History Of Liberalism in US

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

Nice short academic article that just recites some history. Three waves of US liberalism:

1).Progressives.  Woodrow Wilson. The "vision of change" -- old is bad, new is good. Destruction of tradition.
2). Economic liberals, FDR, "extended rights". Forget "pursuit", you have the right to ACHIEVE food, a home, medical care, education, retirement, a well paying job you like -- tons of stuff. "Gimme liberals"
3). Cultural liberals. "freedom from morals" -- no fault divorce, gay rights, abortion, legal drugs, etc. "do what feels good" liberals.

BO is looking to extend all three of these waves, and the fact that each of them has done broad damage to America already in the past is of no concern. Understanding a liberal is essentially just understanding the world view of a two year old.

• I'm a new phenomenon, forget all that has gone before me, be still and know that I am god.
  
• I want it, I want it all, I want it right now, and I have no responsibility to do anything to get it. Make it so, Peons.
  
• I'm going to do whatever I want to do and do it whenever and with whomever I like. Restrictions are evil and stupid, whatever feels good to me ought to be applauded and celebrated.
  

A Muslim Nation?

Barack Hussein Obama: US "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world" :: Toby Harnden

Our MSM chastises anyone so foolish to ever make the statement that the US is a "Christian Nation". It is one of those cases that I'd tend to agree with them -- we USED to be one, and we were founded as an "Anglo-Saxon / Judaeo-Christian VALUED" nation, but no longer. I guess BO is right yet again, we may as well be a "Muslim Nation" -- I'm not sure if that is somehow better than a "Pagan Nation" which is what we really seem to be, but it is probably more accurate than "Christian".

So, does anyone have any expectations of some flap in the press over BO making this statement??? Now whenever there are any statements about a "Christian Nation", we get the big "intolerance" claims -- no gays, no legal abortion, no drugs, no beer, people looking in your bedroom window ... all that "Christian stuff".

So, how about a Muslim Nation? Last I checked the Muslims were much more strict on all the same stuff as the Christians, PLUS, you get your women in burkas, stoning adultresses, rape being the womans fault, stoning gays, multiple wives, etc ... so why would the MSM not immediately leap to the horror of what it would mean to be a "Muslim Nation" when our infallible President BO makes the statement?

It is enough to make one suspect the potential of press bias!!

The Race to One Party

The GOP Ain't Dead Yet - WSJ.com

The left is still having problems with not everyone joining the Democrat party. One party rule is a strong tradition of the left, and the idea that anyone would not think the same as their brilliance has directed us puts them in some degree of high dungeon.

Naturally, all problems are a direct result of Republicans and Republican policies -- while it may need saying (again and again and again), it needs no supporting evidence -- it is a plain fact.

Unfortunately, they have been able to come up with only one way: Impostor theory. The movement's instinct, developed during better times, is to dismiss all failings as authenticity problems. The true faith wasn't discredited, they say, Dubya simply failed to live up to it. We didn't change Washington, they moan, Washington changed us. 

Sorry, chaps. Conservatives did change government, and their long experiment with that institution discredited central elements of their faith. That is obvious today, even if it remains a forbidden thought for the movement itself.

There we have it -- massive pork, federal meddling in education and a huge new drug program were ALWAYS part of the core Republican policy, and the idea that "conservatives" caused all current problems (they were always such huge fans of sub-prime loans for instance) simply needs no support. It is the obvious -- like the earth being round.

I'm one of the few folks to the right of Marx that had the strong stomach to slog through Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas". I'll save you the trouble -- it says OVER and OVER that the only values worth thinking about are economic, and OBVIOUSLY, Democrats can "give" (rob from the "rich" and give to the "poor") far more than Republicans will, so only an idiot would vote Republican! From Franks and (BO's) POV, that golden goose will just keep laying eggs just as fast after they cut it open and take a few extra!

So Frank's believes he has completely discredited the idea of "populist Republicans" in the following paragraph. There simply is no "elite", just as there is no "left wing media" -- it doesn't exist at all. However, no matter how few Republicans are left, as long as they draw breath there is a threat of a return to "the religious right" or worse. Potentially death camps for Christians would be a good move??

One way back is the populist one, expanding on conservatism's understanding of itself as a rebellion against "elites." I have spent no small amount of ink criticizing the emptiness of this rhetoric -- conservatism is pretty much responsible for our massive economic inequality, after all -- but I will acknowledge that hollow populism beats none at all.

Ah, the threat of having a two party system -- we need to recognize the danger (how ever small it may be) and work to stamp out the last vestiges of those evil Republicans!

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Dunning-Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Darwin put it, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge". The Dunning-Kruger (DK) study seems to prove it and shows the following:

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

We **ALL** fall prey to this, since we are OFTEN incompetent!  In fact, for ALL of us, our areas of incompetence VASTLY exceed those areas we are competent, and the worst problem tends to be those areas where we are "unconsciously incompetent". We are too stupid to know that we don't know!

I believe the greater the intelligence of a person and lower their formal training, the worse the DK problem is likely to be. Why? Because formal training is going to teach some level of humility, no matter how intelligent you are. In formal training you WILL find out there are things that you thought you knew but didn't. Some things will be counterintuitive and downright HARD for you even though you are normally bright. These discoveries will tend to teach at least a little humility, so it will be more possible to realize the dangers of "unconscious incompetence" and avoid some DK effects.

If you are more intelligent than the average person, you can commonly "make something up" that will sound plausible to all but the more intelligent or the better trained in some area that you happen to drift into. Even worse, if you couple high intelligence with argumentative ability, you are likely to intimidate even those who really DO know from pointing it out since you will STILL be hard to argue with / convince. (If you are REALLY bad, you will just call them "racist" if they point out where you are wrong!)

A near certain sign of a vast level of ignorance and high level of the DK  effect is the belief  that "Someone that was "smart" could explain this to me SIMPLY (meaning "simple" to the person that wants the explanation)". Often this comes with the corollary that "If it can't be explained (to the person) "simply", NOBODY  understands it very well and all views (certainly MINE!) are pretty much "equal"".  (the simple answer to this is Quantum Physics -- even guys like Feynman said that if you weren't confused, you REALLY didn't understand it!)

The core of this idea is viewing ones self as the center of the universe to an extraordinary degree -- why is it that all phenomena ought to be easily explainable to YOU (if indeed to ANYONE)? It is a piece of unfounded faith that shows extreme ignorance coupled with hubris, but remember, it is very possible to couple extreme ignorance with high intelligence. Narcissists are often exactly this case -- convinced they are the only one that really matters, and their special knowledge, opinion and perspective is really the only one that counts! (Obama may be the greatest example of this in history!)

High Dunning-Kruger and great communication skills is especially dangerous. "See Obama". Note, Reagan had great communications skills, but very low DK -- he clearly knew what he didn't know and acted accordingly. Bush had poor communications skills, and I'd argue a low DK problem as well -- he also was willing to bring in expertise that he knew exceeded his and support them. BO has no clue about economics, mideast history, running car companies, what it takes to win against terrorists, or apparently even Constitutional Law, which was SUPPOSED to be his specialty!  -- but no matter. He is absolutely convinced he can do all of them because he has a law degree from Harvard and worked as a Community Organizer for awhile!

Very much thought about this and the term "chilling" doesn't really do it justice!